This paper is an outcome of my experience as a team member of the Euro-India Innovation mapping project. The project set out to map India’s IT Innovativeness over two years from January 2008-to December 2009. Here I bring to the fore the different methodologies that we reviewed in order to implement the innovation mapping project and our realization that each methodology in itself though useful may not be sufficient to address the complexity of the subject matter due to the vastness of India and its emerging nature. I outline some of the challenges faced by us when designing a methodology for mapping innovation in a large emerging economy. I discuss some solutions and report on how we solved the problem only to be faced with newer challenges. A methodological design is a challenging endeavor in the normal of time, when it comes to doing the same in a large emerging economy the problems becomes compounded. I highlight some of these problems and discuss some solutions in this paper. I conclude this paper with some insights proposing a mix methodology approach has been useful in addressing the challenges of data collection in emerging economies using our Indian experience as a backdrop to our findings.

In this paper I ask the basic question highlighted in the title, how does innovative potential and collaborative capacity contribute to a firm’s innovativeness? To address this central question I draw on innovative potential and collaborative capacity as a dynamic notion evaluates the data from India. This paper tries to create a framework creating a sustainable environment for ICT Innovation. To do that I argue that innovative potential and collaborative capacity provide a constellation of inputs to the firm to address both internal and external challenges. For instance while innovative potential works at a project or an individual level while collaborative capacity is seen to work at a firm or perhaps at the inter firm level. This does not mean IP acts only at the locus stated. I conjecture that IP/CC interact with each other at defferent levels, where each takes turn in driving the process of ICT Innovation.

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In this article I discuss the Indian outsourcing phenomena and ask the question now what? Using data from the Euro-India project I demonstrate that a small but significant part of the Indian IT entities are moving beyond outsourcing, to co-creation where Innovation and the desire to create new markets is the key driver. This does not imply that outsourcing will disappear but it does mean that firms will engage in globalization using innovative mix of business models and technical platforms. We discuss the implication of this slow transformation to co-creation of innovation for the global outsourcing industry. The key thesis of this paper is to discuss co-creation as a form of innovation and how such a form of innovation is likely to bring Indian companies rich dividends.

Though this paper is in a very preliminary stage, I use the data gathered using the Delphi process to discuss some policy instruments that could be of use for emerging economies to create an environment of innovation. I acknowledge fiscal instruments to be an important driver but I choose not to focus on fiscal enablers of innovation rather focusing on how the lack of fiscal incentives can help create a sustainable environment for innovation. I use the early Indian experience and contrast it with later fiscal activism shown by the government to illustrate that perhaps the government need to focus on the supply side of knowledge and let the demand for knowledge and innovation be led by the firms at the local level. I argue this strategy to be the most sustainable in the long run.

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In this paper my endeavor is to explore the meaning and implication of collaberation within a dynamic frame which I refer to a capacity. First I review the collaboration literature from an innovation perspective and then develop a framework that enables me to engage with the data we collected during the Euro-India Innovation Mapping project funded by the European Union under the FP-7 program. The idea is to refine theory and contribute to a better understanding of collaborative as a capacity firms can build creating the environment of collaboration both within and outside. I conclude this paper discussing the new insight on collaborative capacity (CC) of firms and their implications for ICT collaboration and firm innovativness.

In this paper I discuss innovative potential at a firm level using information system literature and broadening my review to R&D literature as well. This review enables me to develop a theoretical frame of what researchers have indicated to be innovative potential or capacity at the firm level. While the information system literature does refer to a firms innovative potential as a dynamic phenomena, thus the inception of this phenomena is rooted through the R&D literature, which is helpful but in itself has a weakness. In relying on the R&D perspective to explain innovative potential of a firm information system researchers have stuck to the static notion of innovation while talking about innovative potential (IP) as a dynamic process. This paper redresses that imbalance as it tries to formulate a theory of IP that in my opinion better explains IT innovation at the firm level from a dynamic perspective in its conception, operation and instantiation. I conclude this paper with insights on what I call the dynamic IP threshold arguing that being dynamic cannot be seen as a point in time but a threshold existing over time. I then discuss some implications. I suggest that firms need to consider IP as a long term investment not only in human capital but in the way the human capital is allowed to engage with new ideas. I suggest IP can be build using institutional logics that enable openness and collegiality.

In this paper I present a framework of innovation and then use the framework on interview data collected to reflect and gain insight on the status of ICT Innovation using India as a case. The central question I pose in this paper is how ICT Innovativeness can be articulated. In this paper I argue that innovativeness is a dynamic concept distinct from notions of R&D, although elements of innovativeness determine the outcome of successful R&D but a successful R&D does not necessarily imply that the is innovative. We make distinction between R&D and innovation, using the distinction we demonstrate how the dynamic nature of innovation needs to be understood distinctly different from R&D, I propose that R&D is a institutional arrangement while innovativness is a contextual phenomena being determined by factors both inside and outside the business entity. I conclude this paper with a framework for understanding the dynamic nature of ICT Innovativeness, I use data from India to reflect on the research question.